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2017 ATLAS Winners

The annual Apereo Teaching and Learning Awards promote excellence and innovation in the use of Apereo software for teaching and learning. Award submissions are carefully evaluated against formal rubrics by a panel of peers to ensure the highest standards, and focus on the underpinning use of at least one piece of Apereo community produced software: the Sakai Collaboration and Learning Environment, Open Academic Environment, Karuta next-generation portfolio tool, Xerte for authoring interactive and accessible content, or Opencast for media capture and distribution.

This year’s awards represent excellence and diversity across the community of Apereo software adopters. Here the award winners describe their activities.

Composing the Internship Experience: Social Media and Digital Discourse – Denise Comer, Duke University, USA
“Composing the Internship Experience is an innovative, fully online undergraduate course at Duke University, based in Sakai, that enables students to meaningfully reflect on and productively narrate their summer internship or work-related experiences using digital rhetoric and social media. Sakai serves as the foundational platform for the learning experience, with weekly lessons revealed each week, interactive forums for peer and instructor feedback on writing and peer-to-peer and student-instructor engagement, wikis, and guided reflections for in-depth reflections. The course integrates within Sakai links to many forms of media for course content, as well as a variety of other learning platforms such as WordPress, Instagram, and Google Hangouts for weekly real-time virtual writing workshops and student-instructor conferences.”

“This on-line course provides high school teachers with innovative tools for the teaching of experimental sciences from an interdisciplinary perspective. It approaches the teaching and learning of science through selected subjects in physics, health, chemistry, psychology, biology and geography. The development and utilization of Sakai boosts the effectiveness and efficiency of science education and collaborative learning. There are numerous examples of how Sakai has been used to facilitate better learning in a cost-effective manner by creating collaborative groups. Sakai enables more rewarding and efficient use of teacher time through the integration of solutions to current and complex problems.”

Introduction to Communication Online Class – Jennifer Robinette, Marist College, USA
“The introduction to communication online class is a virtual threshold to the communication major at Marist College. All communication majors are required to take the course, in-person or online, and students from many other majors take it as an elective. When developing a new site for the class, iLearn (the Marist instance of Sakai) tools enabled me to bring theory to life for students by creating experiences with communication theories in action that would be impossible in a traditional classroom. These interactive activities involve online skill challenges and reflective tasks soliciting feedback from family and friends to cultivate self-awareness, theory application, and critical thinking skills.”